


The Last One

by koalathebear



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Animals, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 15:51:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koalathebear/pseuds/koalathebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sad story about Aster, the last Tigon in the Canberra zoo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last One

**Author's Note:**

> A Tigon is a hybrid of a male tiger and a lioness - and a liger is a hybrid of a female tiger and a male lion. In 1987, two tigons (Aster, a male, and Tangier, a female) were bred accidentally to a Bengal tiger and a lioness at an Ashtons Circus in Australia. In 1994 Aster mauled a child who put his arms through the bars of the tigons' cage. In December 2000, Australia's National Zoo in Canberra acquired the tigons, along with lions and tigers, from the private facility whose big cat accommodation was found to be inadequate. Although the zoo did not normally take on hybrids and would not breed any hybrid big cats, the tigons had no alternative. After Tangier died, only Aster remained.

Aster stares unblinkingly at the hordes of faces that study him with undisguised curiosity and wonder. They call him an accident. A freak of nature.

He has heard other animals speak wistfully of boundless spaces and running free - although each retelling is different, the memory of their life of freedom vanishing as time passes. Aster has only ever known the restrictive confines of his barred cage, the hot, crowded and noisy circus ring and now this enclosure in a place the humans call a zoo.

His tail twitches convulsively as he observes another flash of blinding light and sees a child pointing. It brings back the memory of another human child whose curiosity prompted him to push his hands through the bars of Aster's cage. Aster remembers the taste of hot blood, flesh and the scream of pain and fright. After that day, the cages seemed to shrink in size and his precious exercise time lessened. Tangier never reproached him although she, too suffered the punishment for his thoughtless crime.

Aster sniffs at the place where Tangier used to sleep. When she sickened, her movements became laboured and sluggish. She would lie in the sun, her tired eyes glazed over with weariness as she could barely summon the strength to eat her food. The abjurations of tourists to move, turn her head or stand went unheeded. Only Aster's gentle, pleading nudges ever evoked any response from her.

 _Don't leave, I will be alone ...._

When Tangier eventually grew too sick and weak to move, the humans took her away.

Almost nothing remains of Tangier now except a residual scent that is fading swiftly and a lingering memory of her low-pitched purr that would cause her whole body to quiver. As Aster meets the inquisitive gazes of the tourists who gaze at him, he wonders if humans feel sorrow and loneliness. He moves around the enclosure with sinuous and silent grace. Although the hot, Australian sun is scorching in its heat, his heart is cold and dying slowly.

Aster inhales and exhales, his breathing the only measure of time passing and the lessening of his days. He is alone and he is the last.


End file.
